(excerpts)...FROM ITS very beginning, the Zionist movement has denied the existence of the Palestinian people. . .
...So who were these curious human beings they met when they came to the country? Oh, ah, well, they were just people who happened to be there, but not “a” people. Passers-by, so to speak. Later, the story goes, after we had made the desert bloom and turned an arid and neglected land into a paradise, Arabs from all over the region flocked to the country, and now they have the temerity – indeed the chutzpah – to claim that they constitute a Palestinian nation!
For many years after the founding of the State of Israel, this was the official line. Golda Meir famously exclaimed: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people!”A huge propaganda machine – both in Israel and abroad – was employed to “prove” that there was no Palestinian people. A lady called Joan Peters wrote a book (“From Time Immemorial”) proving that the riffraff calling themselves “Palestinians” had nothing to do with Palestine. They are nothing but interlopers and impostors. The book was immensely successful – until some experts took it apart and proved that the whole edifice of conclusive proofs was utter rubbish...
...The name “Palestine” was mentioned by a Greek historian some 2500 years ago. A “Duke of Palestine” is mentioned in the Talmud. When the Arabs conquered the country, they called it “Filastin”, as they still do”...
...For centuries, Palestine was considered a part of Greater Syria (the region known in Arabic as ‘Sham’). There was no formal distinction between Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians and Jordanians. But when, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the European powers divided the Arab world between them, a state called Palestine became a fact under the British Mandate, and the Arab Palestinian people established themselves as a separate nation with a national flag of their own...

(excerpts)...since Mr. Gingrich likes to see his ranting about the Palestinians as factually correct history...I would like to introduce Professor Ze`ev Herzog to Mr. Gingrich.
Prof. Ze’ev Herzog teaches in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University. He took part in the excavations of...[numerous]. He is the author of books on the city gate in Palestine and its neighbors and on two excavations, and has written a book summing up the archaeology of the ancient city......After decades of extensive and arduous archeological excavations and search, Prof. Herzog and many other Israeli archeologists, such as Prof. Israel Finkelstein et al, reached a robust conclusion that somehow resembled Prof. [Shlomo] Sand’s thesis of the invention of the Jewish people...
...Here is a summary by Prof. Herzog, from his famous article “Deconstructing the Walls of Jericho” published in Ha’aretz Magazine, Friday, October 29, 1999 that explains why the harmonious picture of the historicity of the Promised Land collapsed:

Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel, archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs’ acts are legendary stories, we did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, we did not conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon. Those who take an interest have known these facts for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and doesn’t want to hear about it.This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal territory...

RE: "Politico is saying that Sheldon Adelson, the ultra-Zionist casino owner reported by Forbes to be the third-richest person in the U.S., may have committed $20 million to pro-Gingrich groups" ~ Weiss

(excerpt) Newt Gingrich, the US Republican presidential hopeful and former House Speaker who said Palestinians are an “invented people,” was making a “play” to attract “Jewish” money to his campaign, a former close associate said today.
Reacting to Gingrich’s comments on the Palestinians, Matt Towery, a conservative columnist who served as a campaign strategist for Gingrich in the 1980s, told CNN’s Saturday Morning News:

The Republican primary is one in which primarily you have money coming from pro-Israelis and in Jewish organizations and that[s] a play for that money. And you’re really are not going to have a whole lot of folks involved from either the Arab world or from any area that might be affected by these comments that are going to be voting in any of these primaries any time soon.

It is generally considered taboo in the United States and even evidence of “anti-Semitism” to talk about the influence of “Jewish” or pro-Israel money in elections. That a former Gingrich advisor and well-known Republican pundit is doing so openly is a notable development...

RE: "the thread that ties these events together is this: The 'war on terror,' a 'war' in which the US and Israel both claim to be fighting the same fight by locking up non-citizens they declare to be 'terrorists,' has come back home for Israeli and US citizens." ~ Alex Kane

MY COMMENT: Although "administrative detention" was used by the British in Palestine during the mandate period, it has been continued by Israel for use against Palestinians and has become an integral component of Jabotinsky's "Iron Wall". And the US' "Global War on Terror" pretty much seems to be an American version of the "Iron Wall", with "indefinite detention" becoming one of it's key components.

FROM WIKIPEDIA [Iron Wall (essay)]:

(excerpt)...Jabotinsky argued that the Palestinians would not agree to a Jewish majority in Palestine, and that "Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach."[1] The only solution to achieve peace and a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, he [Ze'ev Jabotinsky] argued, would be for Jews to unilaterally decide its borders and defend them with the strongest security possible...

ALSO SEE: Gingrich comments on Palestinians a "play" for "Jewish" money, former strategist says, by Ali Abunimah, 12/13/11

(excerpt) Newt Gingrich, the US Republican presidential hopeful and former House Speaker who said Palestinians are an “invented people,” was making a “play” to attract “Jewish” money to his campaign, a former close associate said today.
Reacting to Gingrich’s comments on the Palestinians, Matt Towery, a conservative columnist who served as a campaign strategist for Gingrich in the 1980s, told CNN’s Saturday Morning News:

The Republican primary is one in which primarily you have money coming from pro-Israelis and in Jewish organizations and that[s] a play for that money. And you’re really are not going to have a whole lot of folks involved from either the Arab world or from any area that might be affected by these comments that are going to be voting in any of these primaries any time soon.

It is generally considered taboo in the United States and even evidence of “anti-Semitism” to talk about the influence of “Jewish” or pro-Israel money in elections. That a former Gingrich advisor and well-known Republican pundit is doing so openly is a notable development...

RE: "Did anyone notice that if you look up the article mentioned in the third bullet point (“Clinton got it badly wrong: Israel isn’t Iran…”)...it’s a snarky article that calls Israel out on its outrageous behavior" ~ Olsen

SEE: Unlike Iran, Israel won't face sanctions, by Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz, 12/07/11Israel is a mature, independent country, and it is entitled to decide for itself what kind of democracy best suits it - even if it is a suicidal democracy.

(excerpt). . .This is a difference of vast proportions. Iran doesn't put on sanctimonious airs, doesn't cluck its tongue at others, doesn't disguise what it is and doesn't try to sell its system of government to the world as "an island of democracy."

Nevertheless, there's one regard in which Iran does resemble Israel: When the West, and especially the United States, assails Iran over its human rights situation, Iranian leaders respond in almost the exact same words that Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan used in response to Clinton's remarks: "I recommend that elected officials everywhere focus first of all on their own domestic problems."

But at least when Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei assails the human rights situation in the United States and advises it to investigate Guantanamo Prison before preaching morality to the Islamic Republic, his hands are clean of American money. When Israeli ministers advise Clinton to examine the mote in her own eye, however, they simultaneously continue to finance some of their ministries' activities with the American taxpayer's money. . .

RE: "Remnick has been a leading voice on the issue in the last year, but in his New Yorker piece he is obfuscating, and the reason is obvious; Remnick is concerned that talk about Jewish money will arouse anti-Semitism in the United States." ~ Weiss

MY COMMENT: Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post doesn't seem to be concerned about inciting anti-Semitism when she speaks to an audience of Christians and slams Jews for being naively liberal as a way to try and explain that they have fallen away from God and been captivated by the “religion of liberalism” (causing the Christian audience to express considerable dismay).

(excerpt)...And this is the rub – Christian Zionists love the idea of Jews – not Jews as they actually are, but as representatives of God's ongoing truth and impending Christian salvation. They love religious Jews who, through the conflation of American and Israeli identities, many seem to think of as sharing the exact same values as them, minus Jesus. Whether it is CUFI on Campus students excitedly Tweeting "there are so many Jews here!" or women fawning over their new Star of David necklaces and sharing stories of possible Jewish lineage, it seems that actual interaction with Jews of diverse opinions is significantly lacking. So while conversion attempts are waning (some attendees expressed the idea that God is creating "one new man" with Christians and Jews as they are) there is still a need for conversion to the political philosophy of Christian Zionists. And this is where those Jews who are strong supporters of CUFI come in handy. They can criticize Jews to a far greater degree than any Christian Zionists would be willing to do. Conservative commentator Jennifer Rubin spent a great deal of her talk slamming her co-religionists for being naively liberal, and referencing her fellow panelist's father’s book – Norman Podhoretz's Why are Jews Liberal? – as a way to try and explain that they have fallen away from God and been captivated by the "religion of liberalism" to which the audience expressed considerable dismay.
Rubin and others are useful for this kind of criticism because it allows them to express contempt for their fellow Jews, which coming out of the mouth of anyone else would, quite rightly, be considered anti-Semitism...

RE: “[the] standing ovation [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby” ~ Friedman

ALSO SEE: "Bibi and the Yo-Yos", by Uri Avnery, Antiwar.com, 05/26/11:

(excerpt) It was all rather disgusting.There they were, the members of the highest legislative bodies of the world’s only superpower, flying up and down like so many yo-yos, applauding wildly, every few minutes or seconds, the most outrageous lies and distortions of Binyamin Netanyahu.It was worse than the Syrian parliament during a speech by Bashar Assad, where anyone not applauding could find himself in prison. Or Stalin’s Supreme Soviet, when showing less than sufficient respect could have meant death.
What the American Senators and Congressmen feared was a fate worse than death. Anyone remaining seated or not applauding wildly enough could have been caught on camera – and that amounts to political suicide. It was enough for one single congressman to rise and applaud, and all the others had to follow suit. Who would dare not to?
The sight of these hundreds of parliamentarians jumping up and clapping their hands, again and again and again and again, with the Leader graciously acknowledging with a movement of his hand, was reminiscent of other regimes. Only this time it was not the local dictator who compelled this adulation, but a foreign one.The most depressing part of it was that there was not a single lawmaker – Republican or Democrat – who dared to resist. When I was a 9 year old boy in Germany, I dared to leave my right arm hanging by my side when all my schoolmates raised theirs in the Nazi salute and sang Hitler’s anthem. Is there no one in Washington DC who has that simple courage? Is it really Washington IOT – Israel Occupied Territory – as the anti-Semites assert? …

(excerpts)...Much of this money is raised at lavish fundraisers in New York City, including an annual $300-a-plate dinner. In 2010 the group took donors on a cruise it called the “Hebron Aid Flotilla,” a jab at the pro-Palestinian Gaza flotilla earlier that year.
This year’s event was held Dec. 3 at the New York Hall of Science in Queens. The event featured video messages, one recorded by former presidential candidate and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and another from Florida Rep. Allan West, the Tea Party stalwart...
...According to the Israeli financial filings, the Hebron Fund’s money also reaches a subset of settlers who have repeatedly been documented harassing their Palestinian neighbors. These are the settlers in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood, who, according to the Israeli financial documents, receive the charity’s largesse.
In this neighborhood, the Abu Ayesha family lives on one side of a dead-end street. On the other, settlers. The Palestinian Authority helped the Abu Ayeshas install metal screens on the exterior of the house to protect it from rocks thrown by settlers, giving the whole building the appearance of a cage.
When B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights monitors, distributed cameras to the Palestinians living in the caged house in 2007, they recorded startling scenes of settler children throwing stones at the cage. In what became something of an iconic video, a settler woman peers through the screen repeatedly hissing, “Whore! Whore!” at a woman inside.
That’s what the Hebron Fund is paying for with tax-deductible U.S. contributions...

RE: "Six years ago when Walt and Mearsheimer published their landmark paper... I thought there was going to be a vigorous democratic debate... I ran around my house shooting off an imaginary six-gun and shouting, It's high noon!" ~ Weiss

MY COMMENT: Might we call that fairly typical Weissglossian exuberance? That said, it's not nearly as bad as Dickersonian dyspepsia.

ANSWER: New Ziocaine X-treme®, of course! It's guaranteed to knock you senseless!™

P.S. If new Ziocaine X-treme® doesn't "tickle your fancy", you might want to try a gramme or so of Soma®. Take a holiday from reality™ whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology. There is always Soma®, delicious Soma®, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for an eternity on the Dark Side of the Moon (VIDEO, 06:39), and a whole fistful to embark upon The Journey to the Center of the Mind* (VIDEO, 03:31).
* Aren't those go-go dancers hot/haute?!?!

ALSO SEE: Racism, Genocide and Business as Usual ~
The Republicans and the Palestinians, by Robert Fatina, Counterpunch, 12/13/11

(excerpts) As each election approaches, few candidates miss making a trek to worship at the altar of the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC). There they pay homage, hoping to be anointed with the generous largess that that organization dispenses, mainly through its many fallen angels.
The most recent pilgrim to this unholy site is Republican presidential candidate wannabe Newt Gingrich, serial adulterer, egomaniac and blowhard extraordinaire. There, bowing before one of the gods of the almighty dollar, he verbalized what his fellow worshippers have vaguely hinted at, but always practiced. Said the adoring Mr. Gingrich: “Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman empire.” He further expounded: “I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people.”
Mr. Gingrich chooses to ignore that this ‘non-state’ is referenced in the Old Testament.
One might well imagine a Native American leader saying: “Remember, there was no United States country. It was part of the British Empire. I think we have an invented United States citizenry.”...

ALSO SEE: Racism, Genocide and Business as Usual ~
The Republicans and the Palestinians, by Robert Fatina, Counterpunch, 12/13/11

(excerpts) As each election approaches, few candidates miss making a trek to worship at the altar of the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC). There they pay homage, hoping to be anointed with the generous largess that that organization dispenses, mainly through its many fallen angels.
The most recent pilgrim to this unholy site is Republican presidential candidate wannabe Newt Gingrich, serial adulterer, egomaniac and blowhard extraordinaire. There, bowing before one of the gods of the almighty dollar, he verbalized what his fellow worshippers have vaguely hinted at, but always practiced. Said the adoring Mr. Gingrich: “Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman empire.” He further expounded: “I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people.”
Mr. Gingrich chooses to ignore that this ‘non-state’ is referenced in the Old Testament.
One might well imagine a Native American leader saying: “Remember, there was no United States country. It was part of the British Empire. I think we have an invented United States citizenry.”...

(excerpts) "Palesteena", or, "Lena from Palesteena", was a 1920 song... It was originally recorded and performed by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, a band of New Orleans jazz musicians, who released it as an instrumental as a Victor 78, 18717-B, in 1920.
...The melody has a strong Klezmer influence.
The lyrics are one of a number of novelty songs of the era with near-Eastern setting.

LYRICS: "In the Bronx of New York City
Lived a girl, she's not so pretty
Lena is her name...
...She's such a good musician
She got a swell position
To go across the sea to entertain.
And so they shipped poor Lena
Way out to Palesteena...
...While the Arabs danced so gaily
She would practice aily-aily
Down old Palesteena way.
Lena, she's the Queen o' Palesteena
Goodness, how they love her concertina...
...When she squeeks
That squeeze-box stuff
All those sheiks
Just can't get enough.
She got fat but she got leaner (pr. "lee-na")
Pushing on her concertina
Down old Palesteena way."

MY REPLY: "Oops", as Rick Perry might say. Yesterday was one of my "bad brain days"*. That's what happens when I sleep really, really late (12 hours or so). And I almost always do.
*I long ago stopped worrying about 'bad hair days'.

P.S. Annie Robbins? Do I know you? The only Annie I am familiar with is Mondoweiss' "annie". Oh well, the more the merrier, I suppose. "It's [Festivus is]the most wonderful time of the year..." Sure, it still sucks, but not quite as much.

P.P.S. The fundies are a big part of the GOP in both Iowa and South Carolina. I'm not certain about New Hampshire. After that, Romney will probably just toss 'total abdication to Israel' down the old memory hole. That's politics in "America the amnesiac"!

RE: "And here's Romney again doubling down with his insane
foreign policy positioning of abdicating American foreign policy towards Israel . . . to Israel. Does he really see that as a winning concept for most Americans. ~ Alex Kane

MY COMMENT: More likely he sees it as a winning concept for most Iowa Republican caucus attendees.

RE: "Palestinian national identity as it currently is recognized was a reaction to the creation of Israel..." ~ William A. Jacobson, Associate Clinical Professor at Cornell Law School

MY COMMENT: Then why, pray tell, did the Zionists establish a newspaper in 1932 and name it “The Palestine Post”? Why did they dream up that name?

FROM WIKIPEDIA:

(excerpts) 'The Jerusalem Post' is an Israeli daily English-language broadsheet newspaper, founded on December 1, 1932 by Gershon Agron as "The Palestine Post"...
...According to the Historical Jewish Press, 'The Palestine Post' was established "as part of a Zionist-Jewish initiative", and "Zionist institutions considered the newspaper one of the most effective means of exerting influence on the British authorities"...
...In 1950, two years after the State of Israel was declared, the paper was renamed 'The Jerusalem Post'...

P.S. This is the music Robbie Robertson selected for the credits at the end of Scorsese’s film “Shutter Island” (2010).Dinah Washington & Max Richter: This bitter earth/On the nature of daylight (VIDEO, 08:22) – link to youtube.com

ANOTHER TOTALLY EXCELLENT LATE AUTUMN EVENING'S MUSICAL INTERLUDE, brought to you by the proud makers of new Ziocaine Xtreme®:

"Listen to the rice when the wind blows 'cross the water,
King harvest has surely come...
~
...The smell of the leaves,
From the Magnolia trees in the meadow,
King harvest has surely come.
~
Dry summer, then comes fall,
Which I depend on most of all.
Hey, rainmaker, can't you hear my call? ...
~
...Scarecrow and a yellow moon,
And pretty soon a carnival on the edge of town,
King harvest has surely come.
~
Last year, this time, wasn't no joke,
My whole barn went up in smoke.
My horse Jethro, well he went mad
And I can't ever remember things bein' that bad...
~
...Corn in the fields.
Listen to the rice when the wind blows 'cross the water,King harvest has surely come." ~ Robbie Robertson

RE: "I don't know who wrote it--the byline was the pseudonym Judah Benjamin. All I know is that he or she can write." ~ Weiss

MY COMMENT: A pseudonym or a "nom de plumes"?"Enquiring mimes want to know."

FROM WIKIPEDIA:

(excerpt) Judah Philip Benjamin (August 6, 1811 – May 6, 1884) was an American politician and lawyer. Born a British subject in the West Indies, he moved to the United States with his parents and became a citizen. He later became a citizen of the Confederate States of America. After the collapse of the Confederacy, Benjamin moved to England, where he established a second legal career. In 1883 he retired and moved permanently to Paris, where his wife and daughter had lived for years. He died the following year.
During his career in U.S. politics, Benjamin was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives; in 1852 he was elected by the state legislature to the US Senate from Louisiana; the second Jewish senator in U.S. history. Following the formation of the Confederate States of America in 1861, he was appointed by President Jefferson Davis to three different Cabinet posts in his administration. Benjamin was the first Jewish appointee to a Cabinet position in a North American government, and the first Jewish American to be seriously considered for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court (he twice declined offers of nomination). Following his relocation to the United Kingdom, he became a distinguished barrister and was selected in 1872 as Queen's Counsel...

"Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.
~
You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly..." ~ Bob Dylan, 1963

A group of African American politicians, consultants and activists arrived in Israel this week to participate in an American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF) Seminar. The group of 18 includes eight state and local elected officials and three appointed government officials, including the presidents of the city councils of Atlanta and Detroit. The other participants are all deeply involved in political and civic life in their communities, including five who are co-chairs for the DNC’s Generation44 fundraising initiative in their cities. A number of the seminar participants have already attended pro-Israel events in their communities and have shown interest in strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship. Atlanta City Council President Ceasar Mitchell and DeKalb County Commissioner Lee May passed Iranian divestment resolutions in their jurisdictions in 2009.
SOURCE - link to aipac.org

TRASCRIPT:
• [PAUL:] Here with me, Matt Towery, syndicated columnist and former campaign adviser to Newt Gingrich and Lee May, Democratic County commissioner in suburban Atlanta, DeKalb County there. Gingrich's comments on the Palestinians, you've got to wonder now that you've heard it for yourself.
• LEE MAY (D), COUNTY COMMISSIONER, DEKALB COUNTY: Yes.
• PAUL: I want to ask you, Matt, since you've worked with him this has to give pause to people when they consider what they would vote for and how he would handle foreign policy, would it not?
• MATT TOWERY, POLITICAL COLUMNIST: I had a chance to see the entire thing. And the part that I think is sort of being left out in -- in the -- in the overall headline of this is that Gingrich is giving a very accurate, historical review. He used some bad phraseology in my opinion and saying that in essence this is a -- people that don't exist or who were invented -- that wasn't a good phrase.
But what he was explaining is historically very accurate and it's probably why we still have the problem going on that we have. That doesn't mean that I necessarily agree or disagree with him. But I think in terms of the Republican primary, it's not going to be a big problem for him.The Republican primary is one in which primarily you have money coming from pro-Israelis and in Jewish organizations and that a play for that money. And you're really are not going to have a whole lot of folks involved from either the Arab world or from any area that might be affected by these comments that are going to be voting in any of these primaries any time soon.
• PAUL: OK, so for them it's not a problem necessarily. But for the American people, is this even a blip on our radar when it comes down to it, so to speak? I mean, aren't people watching right now in this preliminary months wondering who's going to fix our economy?
• MAY: Well, yes. I think you're right. I think for the grand scheme of things, America is really concerned about that unemployment number. They are concerned about jobs. They are concerned about the cost of goods, of gas, of prices to eat. But in reality, what Newt is doing is he's trying to shore up his support in the Jewish community. He's trying to show them that he is a strong advocate for Israel and for a strong America -- American- Israel relationship. But in doing that, his words, he -- and Newt has always emerged --
• PAUL: So it's a verbiage choice isn't it?
• MAY: Well yes, but his words and he has a way of doing this many times that he'll make certain statements that are very volatile and will cause this kind of conversation. Look I -- you know I -- went to travel to Israel a couple of months ago and I had a chance to meet with many of the Israeli leaders and with the Palestinian Authority leaders as well.
And there is such a -- there is such a volatile issue the peace talks and everything...
SOURCE - link to transcripts.cnn.com* Who paid for Commissioner May's trip to Israel? ~ J.L.D.

...Q - Your latest album, 'Infidels;, is hardly subteen fodder. Some critics have even detected a new note of conservatism in some of the songs -- even outright jingoism in "Neighborhood Bully" in which the metaphorical subject is said to be "just one man" whose "enemies say he's on their land." That's clearly a strong Zionist political statement, is it not?
A - You'd have to point that out to me, you know, what line is in it that spells that out. I'm not a political
songwriter. Joe Hill was a political songwriter; uh, Merle Travis wrote some political songs. "Which Side Are You On?" is a political song. And "Neighborhood Bully," to me, is not a political song, because if it were, it would fall into a certain political party. If you're talkin' about it as an Israeli political song - in Isreal alone, there's maybe twenty political parties. I don't know where that would fall, what party.
Q - Well, would it be fair to call that song a heartfelt statement of belief?
A - Maybe it is, yeah. But just because somebody feels a certain way, you can't come around and stick some political-party slogan on it. If you listen closely, it really could be about other things. It's simple and easy to define it, so you got it pegged, and you can deal with it in that certain kinda way. However, I wouldn't do that. 'Cause I don't know what the politics of Israel is. I just don't know.Q - So you haven't resolved for yourself, for instance, the Palestinian question?
A - Not really, because I live here.
Q - Would you ever live in Israel?
A - I don't know. It's hard to speculate what tomorrow may bring. I kinda live where I find myself.
At another point in the song, you say, "He got no allies to really speak of," and while "he buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied...no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side." Do you feel that America should send troops over there?
No. The song doesn't say that. Who should, who shouldn't -- who am I to say?
Q - Well, do you think Israel should get more help from the American Jewish community? I don't want to push this so far, but it just seems so...
A - Well, you're not pushing it too far, you're just making it specific. And you're making it specific to what's going on today. But what's going on today isn't gonna last, you know? The battle of Armageddon is specifically spelled out: where it will be fought, and if you wanna get technical, when it will be fought. And the battle of the Armageddon definitely will be fought in the Middle East...

RE: "the award for the most sickening response to the shooting of Mustafa Tamimi is this additional tweet from Lerner, which was retweeted by Leibovich: 'What was Mustafa thinking running after a moving jeep while throwing stones?' " ~ Phan Nguyen

AN ENCORE MID-AUTUMN EVENING'S MUSICAL INTERLUDE, proudly brought to you by the makers of new Ziocaine Xtreme®:

"...You can shine your shoes and wear a suit.
You can comb your hair and look quite cute
You can hide your face behind a smile
One thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled inside..." ~ John Lennon

P.S. SING IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT, BOB:"Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs...
...I just want you to know
I can see through your masks...
~
...And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead...." ~ Bob Dylan, 1963"Masters of War" Bob Dylan W/ Lyrics (VIDEO, 04:31) - link to youtube.com

"Robert's got a quick hand.
He'll look around the room, he won't tell you his plan.
He's got a rolled cigarette, hanging out his mouth he's a cowboy kid.
Yeah he found a six shooter gun.
In his dads closet hidden in a box of fun things, and I don't even know what.
But he's coming for you, yeah he's coming for you...
~...Yeah the slight of my hand is now a quick pull trigger,
I reason with my cigarette,
And say your hair's on fire, you must have lost your wits, yeah.
~All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you'd better run, better run, outrun my gun.
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you'd better run, better run, faster than my bullet..." - Foster The People

MY COMMENT: Then why did the Zionists establish a newspaper in 1932 and name it “The Palestine Post"? How did they dream up that name?

FROM WIKIPEDIA (excerpts):

'The Jerusalem Post' is an Israeli daily English-language broadsheet newspaper, founded on December 1, 1932 by Gershon Agron as “The Palestine Post"...
...According to the Historical Jewish Press, 'The Palestine Post' was established "as part of a Zionist-Jewish initiative", and "Zionist institutions considered the newspaper one of the most effective means of exerting influence on the British authorities"...
...In 1950, two years after the State of Israel was declared, the paper was renamed 'The Jerusalem Post'...

(excerpts)...Billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, one of the wealthiest men in the world and a major donor to Jewish and conservative causes, is widely known as a Netanyahu stalwart. Less well known are his equally close ties to Gingrich, to whom he has been a major giver in recent years...
...Adelson has given particularly heavily to Gingrich-associated organizations. Between 2006 and 2010 he donated $7 million to American Solutions for Winning the Future, one of Gingrich’s political groups, according to a database maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics...

RE: "J Street said, '[T]oday, the political pandering on Israel continued, as Newt Gingrich referred to the Palestinians as an 'invented people'...' "

ALSO SEE: Gingrich to Ask John Bolton to be Secretary of State ~ by John Glaser, Antiwar.com, 12/08/11

(excerpts) Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich announced Wednesday that, if nominated, he would be asking former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton to be his secretary of state...
‎...In a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition, Gingrich said, “If he will accept it, I will ask John Bolton to be secretary of state.” This could be a violation of federal law, which prohibits a candidate from pledging an appointment “for the purpose of procuring support in his candidacy.”
The Gingrich campaign has so far refused to comment on the apparent crime.

SEE: "THE POGROMISTS AT STAND WITH US", by Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam, 11/19/10

The bullies who stand with Stand With Us are developing ever more belligerent, assaultive behavior in their jihad against the pro-peace movement. Last week at one of its regular meetings, members of Jewish Voice for Peace were confronted with a number of hecklers who were also attempting to videotape the meeting against the express wishes of JVP. I’m going to let JVP explain what happened:

…Up to a dozen members of San Francisco Voice for Israel/StandWithUs, a right-wing Israeli advocacy group with a documented track record of aggressively taunting and intimidating grassroots peace activists, attended a Bay Area Jewish Voice for Peace community meeting at a South Berkeley Senior Center.
…Wrapped in an Israeli flag, San Francisco Voice for Israel/StandWithUs (SFVI/SWU) member Robin Dubner, an Oakland based attorney, pepper-sprayed two JVP members in the eyes and face after they attempted to nonviolently block her ability to aggressively videotape the faces of JVP meeting attendees against their will. The members, Alexei Folger and Glen Hauer, were careful to make no physical contact with her or her camera prior to the attack.
Folger said, “I did not see it coming and all of a sudden there was gooey stuff all over my head and hand. I have never been pepper-sprayed before, my whole head felt like it was on fire.”...

RE: "70-year-old Palestinian professor is now a political prisoner" ~ Weiss

THIS MIGHT BE A GOOD TIME TO WATCH THIS EXCELLENT ISRAELI FILM (if you have not already seen it):Lemon Tree (Etz Limon), 2008, NR, 106 minutes
A Palestinian widow (Hiam Abbass) fights to keep her lemon grove from being uprooted when Israeli security forces declare it a threat to the Israeli defense minister living next door (Doron Tavory) in this foreign-language drama. Teaming with a young lawyer (Ali Suliman), the widow takes her case to the Israeli Supreme Court. But in the process of seeking justice, she's forced to hide the forbidden bond growing between them.
Language: Hebrew (English subtitles)
Netflix Availability: Streaming and DVD
NETFLIX LISTING - link to movies.netflix.comEtz Limon aka Lemon Tree (2008) [VIDEO, 02:26] Official Movie Trailer HQ - link to youtube.comON YOUTUBE (in 10 parts) -link to youtube.com

MY COMMENT: I'm very disappointed to see these highly partisan attacks being made on the Democrats by this former AIPAC staffer. Not long ago AIPAC took great great pains to claim that it was strictly bipartisan. I guess The Times They Are A-Changin' (VIDEO, 02:58)!

(excerpts) Justin Elliott has the goods on Josh Block, the former AIPAC spokesperson who now works at the centrist Progressive Policy Institute and the lobbying firm Davis-Block...
Elliott's explosive story lays bare the McCarthy-esque tactics the supposedly "pro-Israel" camp in Washington is willing to deploy. Block writes in his email to the listserv (which, with a brilliant lack of self-awareness, is called the Freedom Community)......One can only hope that the opponents of free speech in a rational discussion of Israel and U.S. foreign policy will be the ones who emerge as morally compromised, rather than the bloggers and columnists they are smearing as anti-Semitic...

RE: "Kirk has said the legislation was designed to collapse Iran’s currency and expressed indifference to the suffering of ordinary Iranians as a result of doing so." ~ Ali Gharib &
"the Senator from AIPAC*, Mark Kirk of Illinois" ~ Weiss

(excert)…Mark Kirk, the House member from Chicago who is now the GOP Senate nominee, is the #1 recipient of pro-Israel PAC money in the entire House [before being recently elected to the Senate]. In fact, of the top 10 recipients from both Houses, he is the only House member.
Why do the PACs love him?It is because Kirk is a pure Israel-firster. For Kirk, Israel can do no wrong. Add to that that he sits on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations where he brings home the bacon for Israel big time. Its wish is his command.
I would not categorize him as pro-Israel because that would require supporting an end to the deadly status quo. Mark Kirk is just pro-AIPAC and shaking the trees for all the campaign money he can get by his hate rhetoric about Arabs…

RE: "The disturbing part of this story is that any criticisms of Israel are so politically loaded that Greenberg, an insider if ever there was one, has to run away from her own views when they sneak out."

(excerpts) On 2009 the UN Human Rights Council appointed the South African Judge Richard Goldstone to head the fact-finding mission investigating possible Israeli war crimes committed in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead...
...Goldstone probably had no idea what awaited him. After the Mission published its findings and conclusions, the judge quickly became the victim of a vicious slander campaign. Israel’s Information Minister said that the Goldstone Report was “anti-Semitic.” Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz informed the listeners of Israel Army Radio that Goldstone was “an evil, evil man” and “an absolute traitor,” a “man who uses his language and words against the Jewish people.” ...
...I came to think of Goldstone’s destiny as I was reading "Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists". The book is an anthology with contributions from 25 Jewish activists living in different parts of the world who have come to see the conflict from the Palestinian point of view. For most Jews, criticising Israel comes at a price – relatives and Jewish friends regard it as treason, they are accused of being self-hating, and in some cases even of paving the way for another Holocaust...
...This culture of intolerance is well captured by American musician Rich Siegel when he describes himself as “a cult survivor.” There is something “very seriously wrong with Israel, and with the culture that supports it,” he writes....

P.S. ALSO SEE - Sinning against Zionism: Traitor to Country, by William A. Cook , Dissident Voice, 4/21/11
(excerpt)...The Zionist world...exists on one foundation, a solid block of ice that freezes the soul of all who bear allegiance to its creed of absolute obedience, an ancient form of tribal slavery bound by fear that shackles the soul...
ENTIRE COMMENTARY - link to dissidentvoice.org

(excerpt) In his Senate office, on a shelf next to an autographed baseball, Sen. Rick Santorum keeps a framed photo of his son Gabriel Michael, the fourth of his seven children. Named for two archangels, Gabriel Michael was born prematurely, at 20 weeks, on Oct. 11, 1996, and lived two hours outside the womb.
Upon their son’s death, Rick and Karen Santorum opted not to bring his body to a funeral home. Instead, they bundled him in a blanket and drove him to Karen’s parents’ home in Pittsburgh. There, they spent several hours kissing and cuddling Gabriel with his three siblings, ages 6, 4 and 1 1/2. They took photos, sang lullabies in his ear and held a private Mass.
“That’s my little guy,” Santorum says, pointing to the photo of Gabriel, in which his tiny physique is framed by his father’s hand. The senator often speaks of his late son in the present tense. It is a rare instance in which he talks softly.
He and Karen brought Gabriel’s body home so their children could “absorb and understand that they had a brother,” Santorum says. “We wanted them to see that he was real,” not an abstraction, he says. Not a “fetus,” either, as Rick and Karen were appalled to see him described — “a 20-week-old fetus” — on a hospital form. They changed the form to read “20-week-old baby.”
Karen Santorum, a former nurse, wrote letters to her son during and after her pregnancy…

ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to washingtonpost.com
P.S. Meet the Archangel GayBriel as he begins God’s mission to give guidance to all the Republican Presidential Candidates praying to him for help in making the difficult decision about running for President against the Great Satin Obama.
PART 1 (02:27) - link to youtube.com
PART 2 (02:35) - link to youtube.com

SEE: Is the Twice-Divorced Newt Gingrich Converting to Catholicism for a 2012 Run? ~ by Max Blumenthal, 03/31/09

(excerpt)...With this act and Gingrich's subsequent conversion, [Deal] Hudson [a leading Catholic conservative] said Gingrich has ratified his devotion to the “theocon” agenda. “Newt’s conversion represents about as radical a rejection of secularism and relativism as you can make,” Hudson told me.With more than $5 million from right-wing casino baron Sheldon Adelson, Gingrich recently founded a conservative nonprofit called Renewing American Leadership. Among the group’s planned activities, which appear coordinated with a who’s who of the Christian right, are a series of “tea party”-style protests against Obama’s economic plan, and the production of a film about Pope John Paul II’s role in bringing down the Soviet Union.
According to Hudson, Gingrich’s outrage over Obama’s speech at Notre Dame was his first act as a Catholic politician. “When I learned he was about to convert, I understood his concern,” Hudson said. “He was worried about the Church he was about to enter.”With his sins officially expunged, Gingrich appears poised to play a decisive role in the 2012 Republican presidential sweepstakes. . .

P.S. ALSO SEE: Gingrich and Adelson Forge Firm Alliance, By Josh Nathan-Kazis and Nathan Guttman, The Forward, 12/08/11GOP Frontrunner Boasts Israel Support and Netanyahu Ties
Front of the Pack: Newt Gingrich is surging to the head of the Republican field. He doesn’t boast a large number of Jewish supporters, but has some big names in his corner.
LINK - link to forward.com

RE: "I already have secured from a donor who said they will personally pay for the ambassador's home to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jersualem." - Bachmann

MY QUESTION: Is that kosher (kashrut)?

ALSO SEE - Bachmann: America ‘cursed’ by God ‘if we reject Israel’, By Andy Birkey, The Minnesota Independent, 02/08/10

(excerpt) At a Republican Jewish Coalition event in Los Angeles last week, Rep. Michele Bachmann offered a candid view of her positions on Israel...
...Here’s a transcript of some of her remarks at the RJC event:"I am convinced in my heart and in my mind that if the United States fails to stand with Israel, that is the end of the United States . . . [W]e have to show that we are inextricably entwined, that as a nation we have been blessed because of our relationship with Israel, and if we reject Israel, then there is a curse that comes into play. . ."

"We the undersigned hereby petition this honourable Federal court to order STEPHEN HARPER Prime Minister of Canada to undergo an immediate 30 day psychological evaluation, to determine if his apparent narcissistic personality disorder has caused him to lose grasp of reality. We make this petition based upon his recent actions concerning the Omnibus Crime Bill, his general style of governing and due to an honest fear that he is a clear danger to Canada, her citizens and the rule of law."

(excerpt)...I came to think of Goldstone’s destiny as I was reading "Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists". The book is an anthology with contributions from 25 Jewish activists living in different parts of the world who have come to see the conflict from the Palestinian point of view.For most Jews, criticising Israel comes at a price – relatives and Jewish friends regard it as treason, they are accused of being self-hating, and in some cases even of paving the way for another Holocaust...
...This culture of intolerance is well captured by American musician Rich Siegel when he describes himself as “a cult survivor.” There is something “very seriously wrong with Israel, and with the culture that supports it,” he writes....

“I invite you to talk about our universities,” a woman said. “It seems like we’re paying for our own defamation, though student loans paid for by the government. We send our open-minded, good-hearted 18-year-olds who generally love our country to school and four-years later, they pop out, they despise America, they hate capitalism, they think Israel is the devil. And we’re helping to fund this.”
“Do you have any ideas on how you can stop a system that is 95 percent liberal, socialist, Marxist?” she concluded.
After the question, Perry unexpectedly squinted and gave a thumbs up to someone in the audience. He then responded to the woman by stating he had set out seven reforms in Texas aimed at evaluating the cost-benefit ratio of state funds for universities...

MY COMMENT: George W. Bush did not visit Israel during his first term as president. It was not until January of 2008, three-fourths of the way through his second term, that he visited Israel as president (for just two days).

RE: "...Vaknin...said that for him, Mr. Katsav represented the state in the same way the national anthem and the flag did. To send Mr. Katsav to prison, he said — 'even if he did something wrong' — was like throwing the flag in the garbage." ~ Bronner article

"In a government of law, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."

RE: "In its segregated buses and roads, in its ad campaigns that targets intermarriage and Christmas, in the refusal to end the occupation-- Israel is a different society than ours." ~ Weiss

SEE: Israel’s bizarre decision to give up on education – and its future, by Ami Kaufman, +972 Magazine, 12/03/11

(excerpt) Last week I came across a disturbing story, one of many recently, where Haredi school boys threw stones at secular Jewish school girls. [because] The schoolgirls were singing. . .
. . . what bothered me more about this particular incident was the age of the perpetrators. These were young boys or teenagers, already well versed on the issues of female singing and its dangers.
What this incident shows more than anything else, is the education factor and how it will change this country. And it shows how incidents like the one above are going to happen again, and again and again.
Much has been said on the demographics of the Haredi community and the pace at which it grows. But not many know of how huge an impact Haredi education already has on this state.These Haredi rock-throwing boys learn in a Haredi school. That’s because there are four sectors to the Israeli education system: State, State-Religious, Arab, and ultra-Orthodox (Haredi). The major problem with this is that the level of study in the Arab and Haredi schools is much lower than in the state schools. And what makes the problem even worse, is that the level in the state schools themselves has never been lower. . .

RE: "I'll ask O'Neill: How did Stuart Levey, Marty Peretz's former
student who was dedicated to the 'Zionist dream,' as he wrote in college, become an Under Secretary of Treasury with responsibility for going after Iran?" ~ Weiss

(excerpt)...AIPAC and its associated think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), were instrumental in lobbying the president for the creation of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence unit early in 2004. The Israel lobby also vetted Stuart Levey who President Bush approved to lead the new unit. TFI claims to be “safeguarding the financial system against illicit use and combating rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators, money launderers, drug kingpins, and other national security threats.” However its actions—and more important, inactions—reveal it to be a sharp-edged tool forged principally to serve the Israel lobby...

RE: "most Israelis, including the current prime minister, insist that Israel’s most urgent strategic objective is to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Doing so would temporarily remove the threat of a regional nuclear cascade and maintain Israel’s superiority of arms." ~ Annie Robbins

Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal said this week that Saudi Arabia would consider building nuclear weapons to counter threats from a potentially nuclear armed Iran, and Israel, which is widely assumed to already have nuclear weapons. “If our efforts, and the efforts of the world community, fail to convince Israel to shed its weapons of mass destruction and to prevent Iran from obtaining similar weapons, we must, as a duty to our country and people, look into all options we are given, including obtaining these weapons ourselves,” he told a conference in Riyadh on Monday.

(excerpt) The Lavon Affair refers to a failed Israeli covert operation, code named Operation Susannah, conducted in Egypt in the Summer of 1954. As part of the false flag operation,[1] a group of Egyptian Jews were recruited by Israeli military intelligence for plans to plant bombs inside Egyptian, American and British-owned targets. The attacks were to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian Communists, "unspecified malcontents" or "local nationalists" with the aim of creating a climate of sufficient violence and instability to induce the British government to retain its occupying troops in Egypt's Suez Canal zone.[2] The operation caused no casualties, except for those members of the cell who committed suicide after being captured.
The operation became known as the Lavon Affair after the Israeli defense minister Pinhas Lavon, who was forced to resign because of the incident, or euphemistically as the Unfortunate Affair or The Bad Business (Hebrew: העסק ביש‎, HaEsek Bish or העסק הביש, HaEsek HaBish). After being denied for 51 years, the surviving agents were in 2005 officially honored with a certificate of appreciation by the Israeli President Moshe Katzav. . .

RE: "...Israel thinks it is perfectly acceptable to use Jews living in other countries as its agents." ~ Yossi Gurvitz

ONE NOTORIOUS EXAMPLE: Israel stole uranium from U.S., report will show ~ By Kristin Dailey, The Daily Star, 12/05/11

[EXCERPTS] WASHINGTON: A U.S.-based research institute will soon publish what it says is “indisputable” evidence that Israel stole weapons-grade uranium for its still-undeclared atomic weapons program from a nuclear reprocessing plant in western Pennsylvania.
The Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) will release this month a 300-page report detailing the initial findings of a multi-year research project investigating the disappearance of highly enriched uranium from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (Numec) in Apollo, Pennsylvania in the 1950s and 1960s...
...When contacted by The Daily Star, Zalman Shapiro, the founder and former president of the Numec, strongly denied that any diversion of materials to Israel had ever taken place at the plant.
“The story is fabricated. Absolutely fabricated,” said Shapiro, who is now 91 years old.
Smith said that among the evidence to be included in the report is a DOE document confirming that uranium samples picked up by the CIA outside Israel’s nuclear installation in Dimona bore the same isotopic signature as material produced by the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in the U.S. state of Ohio. The Portsmouth plant was a supplier for Numec...

RE: "Like Jeffrey Goldberg, who spent years as an Israeli then moved back to the United States-- which he believed to be unsafe for Jews-- in part because he could never adapt to Israel's 'coarseness'." ~ Weiss

THE WORDS OF A FORMER ISRAELI:

"...Israelis have never been particularly kind to each other. It’s one of the reasons I left actually. In my late twenties I started to grow weary of the unkind, harsh and unforgiving atmosphere around me. It was a tough place to live in not because of our ‘enemies’ but because of how people treated one another. You would believe that we were all enemies rather than people who have some kind of a shared heritage. The only thing that could unite people and temporarily brought out more kindness and a sense of cooperation was a feeling of being under collective threat, and in particular a ‘good wholesome war’..." - Avigail Abarbanel

RE: "I'll let Ed Koch have the last word on this uncivil union..." ~ Mutter

MY COMMENT: Laugh out loud (lol), big time!

ALAN HERTZBERG, 09/02/11:

(excerpt)...Here’s a hard question that’s popped up in my mind lately. Why do we all seem to be playing “Who’s the Better Jew” around town so much, particularly in the gay community? Don’t get me wrong, the supposed straights are playing it, too, what with Mayor Ed Koch sticking his nose into the Anthony Weiner runoff. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish.
I first noticed Who’s the Better Jew when Michael Lucas started blogging about self-loathing Jews he sees on the other side of the Siegebusters debacle at the LGBT Community Center. I said it at the community forum the Center’s Glennda Testone called, and I’ll say it again: “I am not a self-loathing Jew; I’m a self-respecting Jew. And I’m not anti-Semitic, either; I’m pro-human rights.”...

P.P.S. "Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward." ~ Søren Kierkegaard

"The trouble with using experience as a guide is that the final exam often comes first and then the lesson." ~ Author Unknown

"We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our schoolmasters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us." ~ Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu

RE: "Not sure what I'll do with it, but it'll be next to my certificate of planting a tree in 1976. If I still smoked I'd use it as an ash tray." ~ Liz Shulman

SEE: The Carmel Wildfire is burning all illusions in Israel, by Max Blumenthal, 12/07/10

(excerpt)...The tree was among hundreds of thousands turned to ash by the forest fire pouring across northern Israel, and which now threatens to engulf outskirts of Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city. Over the last four days, more than 12,300 acres have burned in the Mount Carmel area, a devastating swath of destruction in a country the size of New Jersey. While the cause of the fire has not been established, it has laid bare the myths of Israel’s foundation.Israelis are treating the [Carmel] fire as one of their greatest tragedies in recent years...
...the JNF planted hundreds of thousands of trees over freshly destroyed Palestinian villages like al-Tira, helping to establish the Carmel National Park. An area on the south slope of Mount Carmel so closely resembled the landscape of the Swiss Alps that it was nicknamed “Little Switzerland.” Of course, the non-indigenous trees of the JNF were poorly suited to the environment in Palestine. Most of the saplings the JNF plants at a site near Jerusalem simply do not survive, and require frequent replanting. Elsewhere, needles from the pine trees have killed native plant species and wreaked havoc on the ecosystem. And as we have seen with the Carmel wildfire, the JNF’s trees go up like tinder in the dry heat...

RE: "The two Republican frontrunners, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, have now called for the firing of Howard Gutman... The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned Gutman. Also the Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors..." ~ Weiss

FOR THE HUNDREDTH TIME - Sinning against Zionism: Traitor to Country, by William A. Cook , Dissident Voice, 4/21/11

"Hell is where many false commitments must be unlearned." — Ricardo J. Quinones, 'Dante Alighieri'

(excerpt) Richard Goldstone’s journey from Justice to Sinner represents the spiritual act of dying in the Zionist world. By recanting his own report he has attempted to break the bonds that cast him into the sufferings in Caina, Antenora, and Judecca where, in 'Dante’s Inferno', those treacherous to their own, are removed from the light and warmth of their kin, their country, and their masters and suffer eternal damnation in the remorseless dead center of the ice in the most bottomless circle of Hell.
Fortunately, Goldstone like Dante can learn that he has, in his journey, aligned himself with many false gods and many false attachments ignoring on the way the elementary truths that bind humankind ineluctably in one race in a bond of human grace.The Zionist world needs no Hell since it heeds no conscience. It exists on one foundation, a solid block of ice that freezes the soul of all who bear allegiance to its creed of absolute obedience, an ancient form of tribal slavery bound by fear that shackles the soul, by isolation that instills despair, by humiliation that corrodes self, and by victimhood that bonds the tribe in self-perpetuating agony. It is in this sense Medieval, a remnant of the inquisitorial mind that harbored no dissent, gave no credence to personal freedom, and obligated all to one monolithic understanding of commitment to the powers that control...

MY REPLY: Because they (as opposed to Belarus, Latvia, Cameroon, Bangladesh etc.) have a powerful lobby, among other reasons.
Also, you would hardly expect the MIC to team up with peaceful nations like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc.

RE: "One of the big arguments against the Israel lobby theory is that our Middle East policy is driven by the military industrial complex. And so the Iraq war was a war for oil and military spending." ~ Weiss

MY COMMENT: It is not necessarily one or the other. There appears to be a “mature symbiotic relationship”* between Military Industrial Complex (MIC) and the Israel lobby. Alexander Cockburn has written that it was Paul Nitze who first realized how powerful an alliance of the MIC and pro-Israel lobbies would be. Here is an excerpt from a 04/26/07 article of his at Counterpunch:

…Before we conclude that Wolfowitz was the original author of the policies that destroyed Iraq, we should note that his entire career, at least up through his Pentagon service, has been in the service and at the direction of others. His early work in Washington promoting the dubious merits of an anti-ballistic missile programme, for example, was sponsored by Paul Nitze, a powerful insider who devoted a lifetime of intrigue to boosting east-west tensions and US defence spending. Nitze served as godfather to the neoconservative movement in the 70s, correctly calculating that a fusion of the pro-Israel lobby with the military-industrial lobby would create an alliance of unstoppable power. Among the early and most potent recruits was an old friend of Wolfowitz’s, Richard Perle, known and feared in Washington as “the Prince of Darkness” for his ruthless bureaucratic skills and commanding position in the neoconservative forces.
The relationship flourished into Wolfowitz’s sojourn in the Pentagon. Officials who worked closely with him remarked to me on the amount of time Perle, then a close associate of Conrad Black, spent closeted with the deputy secretary. They remained in constant touch, as Wolfowitz’s phone logs attest. Other regular recipients of Wolfowitz calls included Lewis “Scooter” Libby, then chief of staff to Vice-President Cheney and now a convicted felon, and Robin Cleveland. Cleveland was in charge of national security programmes at the White House office of management and budget…

(excerpt)...Netanyahu had sharp words for the protesters. "Attempts by our enemies and their misguided fellow travelers to delegitimize the Jewish state must be countered," he said to thunderous applause...

P.S. Fellow travelers? Where, oh where, have I heard that "fellow travelers" used before? I just can't seem to rememb...Oh, yeah! Back during the Commie scares of the 1940s and 50s in the U.S. What was his name? Oh yeah, Senator Joe McCarthy. Do you remember the famous, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" And then there was the House Un-American Activities Committee. And the Hollywood blacklist of "suspected Communists" and their "fellow travelers".
Clearly, Netanyahu has NO sense of decency. Absolutely none! Nor does Likud MK Ofir Akunis!

RE: "...[Likud MK Ofir] Akunis said McCarthy... "was right in every word, the fact is -there were Soviet agents." ~ Weiss

MY COMMENT: I challenge Likud MK Ofir Akunis to name each of the 57 "known Communists working for the State Department" Senator McCarthy said he had identified as of his Feb. 02, 1950 speech to the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia.

RE: Well, any marriage involving people who are non-Jewish. (Or non-straight…) ~ Chaos4700

SOME JEWS* AS WELL: Russian Jews defy Israeli rabbis' ban on marriage, by Jonathan Cook, The National (U.A.E.), 08/06/11

(excerpts) TEL AVIV // Two immigrants from the former Soviet Union staged a very public wedding in the streets of central Tel Aviv this week to highlight the plight of hundreds of thousands of Jews barred from lawfully marrying in Israel. Nico Tarosyan and Olga Samsovatov chose to tie the knot in a special ceremony on Tuesday - watched by family, friends and curious passers-by - after Orthodox rabbis had denied them the right to wed. The rabbinate says that Mr Tarosyan cannot prove he is Jewish according to its strict standards and therefore should not marry Ms Samsovatov, who is considered a proper Jew...
...An underclass of Jews has emerged in Israel since the early 1990s, when more than one million immigrants began pouring into Israel following the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Many were entitled to emigrate to Israel under the Law of Return, which requires only that they have a single Jewish grandparent. But the authorities - keen to bolster the number of Jews in Israel's demographic battle with the Palestinians - also allowed some to arrive with little documentation or faked papers......Israel has passed control of all matters relating to personal status - births, marriages and divorces, and deaths - to rabbis belonging to the strictest stream of Judaism, Orthodoxy....
...Official figures show that as many as 350,000 Jews are classified by the rabbinate as having "no religion", and are therefore unable to marry in Israel. Their only option is to wed abroad - the marriage is then recognised on their return...

RE: "...her husband...was brutally arrested in the middle of the night by armed Israeli soldiers who beat him in front of his pregnant wife and child and took him away without explanation." ~ Pamela Olson

MY COMMENT: Obviously, Israel is an existential threat to the institution of marriage!

SEE: Women noticeably absent from Jerusalem ads, By Nir Hasson, Haaretz, 10/21/11
Municipality officials deny change in policy, refer to several campaigns that featured images of women. Yet figures in city's public relations industry say women have been entirely removed from public billboards and advertisements.
LINK - link to haaretz.com

P.S. RE: "Panetta...argued that because targets are dispersed and hard to destroy, such an attack would likely delay Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon by only one to two years..." ~ Ignatius

NOTE: "...The audience included senior Israeli officials attending the forum. They gave Panetta a standing ovation at the end of his remarks..." ~ Ignatius

AND: "...Lieberman and Barak were asked to cancel their participation in the event in order to avoid a public debate on the Iranian issue with former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and former IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi, who are publicly opposed to an Israeli attack on Iran..." ~ Ravid, two weeks ago

RE: "Panetta made his comments...in an exchange at Brookings's Saban Forum..." ~ Weiss & "The audience included senior Israeli officials attending the forum. They gave Panetta a standing ovation..." ~ Ignatius

NOTE: Barak, Lieberman to skip U.S. forum to avoid public debate on Iran ~ By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, 11/16/11Officials in Jerusalem say Netanyahu asked Defense Minister and Foreign Minister not to give speeches on the Iranian nuclear issue at the Saban Forum in order to keep a ‘low profile.’

(excerpts) Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman decided to cancel their participation in a Washington conference on Israeli-U.S. ties in order to avoid a public debate on the Iranian nuclear issue, diplomatic sources in Jerusalem said Wednesday.
Barak and Lieberman were due to attend the Saban Forum, which takes place every December in Washington D.C...
...According to sources in Jerusalem, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu...asked them not to give speeches on Iran, which is one of the main subjects of the conference, due to the current international sensitivity of the issue and Israel’s desire to keep a “low profile” on the matter in order to avoid harming efforts to impose further sanctions on Iran.According to other sources, Lieberman and Barak were asked to cancel their participation in the event in order to avoid a public debate on the Iranian issue with former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and former IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi, who are publicly opposed to an Israeli attack on Iran...

RE: "Not a word of course about the treatment of Palestinians, but this is the way that American Jews are checking out, over Netanyahuism..." ~ Weiss

MY COMMENT: They experience far less cognitive dissonance that way!

P.S. SEE: The privileged divide– non-Jews want to talk the issue, Jews don’t - link to mondoweiss.net
AND SEE - SIGMUND FREUD SEZ (posthumously): It is a psychological divide– most Jews have beaucoup cognitive dissonance when talking about the issue... - link to mondoweiss.net

RE: "This is the neoconservative emotional baseline, and the
ultraZionist baseline too, a sincere belief that we are threatened with extermination. I say it is a self-centered delusion, at this time in history, and indeed that Zionism is the greatest threat to the Jewish role in the human family." ~ Weiss

SEE - Sinning against Zionism: Traitor to Country, by William A. Cook , Dissident Voice, 4/21/11

"Hell is where many false commitments must be unlearned." — Ricardo J. Quinones, 'Dante Alighieri'

(excerpt) Richard Goldstone’s journey from Justice to Sinner represents the spiritual act of dying in the Zionist world. By recanting his own report he has attempted to break the bonds that cast him into the sufferings in Caina, Antenora, and Judecca where, in 'Dante’s Inferno', those treacherous to their own, are removed from the light and warmth of their kin, their country, and their masters and suffer eternal damnation in the remorseless dead center of the ice in the most bottomless circle of Hell.
Fortunately, Goldstone like Dante can learn that he has, in his journey, aligned himself with many false gods and many false attachments ignoring on the way the elementary truths that bind humankind ineluctably in one race in a bond of human grace.The Zionist world needs no Hell since it heeds no conscience. It exists on one foundation, a solid block of ice that freezes the soul of all who bear allegiance to its creed of absolute obedience, an ancient form of tribal slavery bound by fear that shackles the soul, by isolation that instills despair, by humiliation that corrodes self, and by victimhood that bonds the tribe in self-perpetuating agony. It is in this sense Medieval, a remnant of the inquisitorial mind that harbored no dissent, gave no credence to personal freedom, and obligated all to one monolithic understanding of commitment to the powers that control...

ALSO SEE: The Dogs of War: The Next Intifada, By Uri Avnery, Counterpunch, 9/03/11

(excerpt)...The second (“al-Aqsa”) intifada started after the breakdown of the 2000 Camp David conference and Ariel Sharon’s deliberately provocative “visit” to the Temple Mount. The Palestinians held non-violent mass demonstrations. The army responded with selective killings. A sharpshooter accompanied by an officer would take position in the path of the protest, and the officer would point out selected targets – protesters who looked like “ringleaders”. They were killed.
This was highly effective. Soon the non-violent demonstrations ceased and were replaced by very violent (“terrorist”) actions. With those the army was back on familiar ground.
All in all, during the second intifada 4546 Palestinians were killed, of whom 882 were children, as against 1044 Israelis, 716 of them civilians, including 124 children...

(excerpts)...For one week last month, Bexar County Sheriff Amadeo Ortiz swapped his cowboy hat for a yarmulke as he visited Israel on an organized trip with other law enforcement leaders.
“I’ve always had an interest in Israel,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “It was a great conference.”Ortiz joined 16 other sheriffs, police chiefs and organization heads, including Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland, on a week-long trip, courtesy of the Jewish Institute for National Security’s Law Enforcement Exchange Program...
...Ortiz said he was impressed by Israel Defense Force soldiers, who he said are trained as soldiers and as police officers.
“If we ever deploy troops along the Texas border, they should have training in being a soldier and in law enforcement,” he said......The junket was Ortiz’s second organized trip to Israel: last year, Bexar County footed the bill to send him to an international conference on homeland security, he said...

This summer, Jefferson Police Chief Joe Wirthman went on a two-week trip 6,000 miles away, traveling across Israel with a delegation of state law enforcement officers as part of the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange.
"It was an awesome trip," he said. "A trip of a lifetime."GILEE, which partners with Georgia State University, sends a different group of Georgia officers every summer to work with Israeli law enforcement and border control.
Commerce Police Chief John Gaissert and University of Georgia Police Chief Jimmy Williamson also have gone in past years.
The object of the program is to learn how Israeli police deal with terrorism every day...
...After his trip, Wirthman is trying to think one step ahead with the Jefferson Police Department, preparing for the type of threatening situations Israel faces 24 hours a day, he said.
"Hopefully it'll never happen, but in this world, 'never' isn't a word," Wirthman said. "We're not invincible here."
He's also witnessed how people live their daily lives with the constant menace of terrorism, he said.Wirthman met one man who sends each of his children on a different bus to school. In case one of the buses is bombed, only one of his three children will be harmed.
"I don't know if I could raise my family under those conditions," said Wirthman, who has three kids of his own.
And nobody in Israel grumbles about it, he said. Instead, they have a strong national pride many Americans had only after 9/11, he said..."

P.S. ALSO SEE: Israel’s bizarre decision to give up on education – and its future, by Ami Kaufman, +972 Magazine, 12/03/11

(excerpt) Last week I came across a disturbing story, one of many recently, where Haredi school boys threw stones at secular Jewish school girls. [Because] The schoolgirls were singing. . .
. . . what bothered me more about this particular incident was the age of the perpetrators. These were young boys or teenagers, already well versed on the issues of female singing and its dangers.
What this incident shows more than anything else, is the education factor and how it will change this country. And it shows how incidents like the one above are going to happen again, and again and again.
Much has been said on the demographics of the Haredi community and the pace at which it grows. But not many know of how huge an impact Haredi education already has on this state.These Haredi rock-throwing boys learn in a Haredi school. That’s because there are four sectors to the Israeli education system: State, State-Religious, Arab, and ultra-Orthodox (Haredi). The major problem with this is that the level of study in the Arab and Haredi schools is much lower than in the state schools. And what makes the problem even worse, is that the level in the state schools themselves has never been lower. . .

(excerpt)...why do the words "Jewish state" appear in our Declaration of Independence? There was a simple reason for that: the UN had adopted a resolution to partition the country between an "Arab state" and a "Jewish state." That was the legal basis of the new state. The declaration, which was drafted in haste, said therefore that we were establishing "the Jewish state (according to the UN resolution), namely the State of Israel."...
...LIKE MOST of us at the time [of the founding of Israel in 1948], David Ben-Gurion believed that Zionism had supplanted religion and that religion had become redundant. He was quite sure that it would shrivel and disappear by itself in the new secular state. He decided that we could afford to dispense with the military service of Yeshiva bochers (Talmud school students), believing that their number would dwindle from a few hundred to almost none. The same thought caused him to allow religious schools to continue in existence. Like Herzl, who promised to "keep our Rabbis in the synagogues and our army officers in the barracks," Ben-Gurion was certain that the state would be entirely secular...BUT THE white lie of Herzl had results he did not dream of, as did the compromises of Ben-Gurion. Religion did not wither away in Israel, but on the contrary: it is gaining control of the state. The government of Israel does not speak of the nation-state of the Israelis who live here, but of the "nation-state of the Jews" - a state that belongs to the Jews all over the world, most of whom belong to other nations.The religious schools are eating up the general education system and are going to overpower it, if we don't become aware of the danger and assert our Israeli essence. Voting rights are about to be accorded to Israelis residing abroad, and this is a step towards giving the vote to all Jews around the world. And, most important: the ugly weeds growing in the national-religious field - the fanatical settlers - are pushing the state in a direction that may lead to its destruction...

Israel has no constitution due to the decision of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, and his secular associates to defer a confrontation with the Zionist religious minority over the nature of the Jewish state in 1948. Thus there aren’t constitutional guarantees for freedom of the press...

AND SEE: Another Theocracy in the Heart of the Muslim World, by Uri Avnery, Antiwar.com, 06/20/11

(excerpts) I am fed up with all this nonsense about recognizing Israel as the “Jewish state.”...
...We have an ongoing battle about this in Israel. Some of us want Israel to be an Israeli state, belonging to the Israeli people, indeed a “state of all its citizens.” Some want to impose on us the religious law supposedly fixed by God for all times on Mount Sinai some 3,200 years ago and abolish all contrary laws of the democratically elected Knesset. Many don’t want any change at all...

ALSO SEE: The Wrong Side of History, by Uri Avnery, Counterpunch, 03/08/11

(excerpts)...ISRAEL IS dominated by the settlers, who resemble in spirit the Crusaders of the 12th century.
Fundamentalist religious parties, not much different from their Iranian counterparts, play a major role in our state. The political and economic elite is steeped in corruption. Our democracy, in which we took so much pride, is in mortal danger.Some people argue that all this is happening because “Netanyahu has no policy”. Nonsense. He has a clear policy: to maintain Israel as a garrison state, to enlarge the settlements, to prevent the foundation of a real Palestinian state, and to go on without peace, in a state of eternal conflict.
Just now it was been leaked that Netanyahu is going to give a historic speech - another one – very soon. Not in the Knesset, whose importance is approaching nil, but in the really important forum: AIPAC, the Jewish lobby in Washington...

Haredim protest Jerusalem summer events
(08/11/11) Hundreds of people show up for rally against 'abominable outdoor events' organized by municipality
LINK - link to ynetnews.com

Thousands of haredim protest in Jerusalem
(06/17/10) Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered in Jerusalem to protest a Supreme Court order to integrate Ashkenazi and Sephardi girls in a West Bank school
LINK - link to jta.org

Last Dance Company In Jerusalem Open Drapes To Protest Haredim
(11/20/11) A Jerusalem dance company will join the series of protests against the exclusion of women from public spaces in the capital by removing the curtains that hide the company's rehearsal hall from the street so passersby will be able to see the male and female dancers.
LINK- link to failedmessiah.typepad.com

Israel: Police Keep Jerusalem Street Open Despite Haredi Protest
(6/29/11) Haredi riots aimed at preventing civilian traffic on Rehov Hanevi’im reached a new height on Saturday afternoon, when over a hundred men of various sects tried to scare secular residents into steering clear of the Jerusalem thoroughfare, shouting “Shabbes,” pelting cars with stones and spitting on passersby.
LINK - link to awid.org

(excerpt) Israel has no constitution due to the decision of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, and his secular associates to defer a confrontation with the Zionist religious minority over the nature of the Jewish state in 1948. Thus there aren’t constitutional guarantees for freedom of the press…

AND SEE: Another Theocracy in the Heart of the Muslim World, by Uri Avnery, Antiwar.com, 06/20/11

(excerpts) I am fed up with all this nonsense about recognizing Israel as the “Jewish state.”…
…We have an ongoing battle about this in Israel. Some of us want Israel to be an Israeli state, belonging to the Israeli people, indeed a “state of all its citizens.” Some want to impose on us the religious law supposedly fixed by God for all times on Mount Sinai some 3,200 years ago and abolish all contrary laws of the democratically elected Knesset. Many don’t want any change at all…

ALSO SEE: The Wrong Side of History, by Uri Avnery, Counterpunch, 03/08/11

(excerpts)…ISRAEL IS dominated by the settlers, who resemble in spirit the Crusaders of the 12th century.
Fundamentalist religious parties, not much different from their Iranian counterparts, play a major role in our state. The political and economic elite is steeped in corruption. Our democracy, in which we took so much pride, is in mortal danger.
Some people argue that all this is happening because “Netanyahu has no policy”. Nonsense. He has a clear policy: to maintain Israel as a garrison state, to enlarge the settlements, to prevent the foundation of a real Palestinian state, and to go on without peace, in a state of eternal conflict.
Just now it was been leaked that Netanyahu is going to give a historic speech – another one – very soon. Not in the Knesset, whose importance is approaching nil, but in the really important forum: AIPAC, the Jewish lobby in Washington…

SING IT BOB:"Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.
~
You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly..." ~ Bob Dylan, 1963

[excerpt] GENEVA, Nov 25 (Reuters) - A U.S.-led push to regulate, rather than ban, cluster munitions failed on Friday after 50 countries objected, following humanitarian campaigners' claims that anything less than a outright ban would be an unprecedented reversal of human rights law.
While the United States, China and Russia want rules about the manufacture and use of cluster bombs, activists say such regulations would legitimise the munitions, backtracking from the Oslo Convention, an international treaty that seeks a worldwide ban.
"Against all odds it looks like we're going to have success this evening," Steve Goose, head of the arms division at Human Rights Watch, told a press conference in Geneva."How often do you see the U.S., Russia, China, India, Israel and Belarus push for something, and they don't get it? That has happened largely because of one powerful alliance driving the Oslo partnership." ...

MY COMMENT: Rest assured, we all have our own "earlier me(s)". We all even have our very own "little light blue box(es)", albeit of various sizes and hues. What's more, we all have lots and lots of them!"He not busy being born is busy dying." ~ Bob Dylan

COMPARE WITH: Gould-Werritty: A Real Conspiracy, Not a Theory, by Craig Murray, 11/25/11 (excerpts) There is a huge government cover-up in progress over the Werritty connection to Mossad and the role of British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould, and their neo-con plan to start a war with Iran...
...Even more blatant was the obstruction of MP Paul Flynn, when he attempted to question Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell on the Gould-Werritty connection at the House of Commons Public Administration Committee. These are the minutes - anybody who believes in democracy should feel their blood boil as you read them:

Public Admininstration Committee 24/11/2011

Q Paul Flynn: Okay. Matthew Gould has been the subject of a very serious complaint from two of my constituents, Pippa Bartolotti and Joyce Giblin. When they were briefly imprisoned in Israel, they met the ambassador, and they strongly believe—it is nothing to do with this case at all—that he was serving the interest of the Israeli Government, and not the interests of two British citizens. This has been the subject of correspondence.

In your report, you suggest that there were two meetings between the ambassador and Werritty and Liam Fox. Questions and letters have proved that, in fact, six such meetings took place. There are a number of issues around this. I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories, but the ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist and he has previously served in Iran, in the service. Werritty is a self-proclaimed—

Robert Halfon: Point of order, Chairman. What is the point of this?

Paul Flynn: Let me get to it. Werritty is a self-proclaimed expert on Iran.

Chair: I have to take a point of order.

Robert Halfon: Mr Flynn is implying that the British ambassador to Israel is working for a foreign power, which is out of order. . .
SOURCE - link to craigmurray.org.uk

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